“expansion”

I’ve written about having professional offices on several occasions, but I’ve also learned that poor choices in office planning can undermine a business, potentially for years. There are several aspects to the risks inherent in renting new offices, and I will attempt to address each of them in turn. At the end of the day, […]

Doug Burgoyne came on the den this week pitching his business Frogbox, which supplies hard plastic boxes as a rental in place of cardboard boxes. His pitch, coming in with a valuation of $1.2 million, was that the business is profitable (though apparently not yet to a significant level), and is designed to scale. The […]

Perhaps this issue is more relevant to those in service-based businesses, though I believe that no matter the nature of your business, this issue will resonate with you. I would be interested in hearing your feedback on this issue – as I believe that it has no right or wrong answers, merely a large set […]

There’s something interesting about the show Dragons’ Den that seems to appeal to a certain type of business person. People come on the show with their businesses, hoping to leave the set with a potential investment from one of the five dragons, yet in the average show, only 2 businesses will get lucky. Having watched […]

When a company undergoes expansion, especially in the early years, there is a risk of changes being made to the culture of the company. When the entire company switches from being able to fit into a single [large] room to requiring several thousand square feet of space in each of their 14 new offices, cultural […]

Having given presentations in the past on time management (for example, my recent talk at Freelance Camp TO), I started to wonder about people’s abilities to manage their time well. What I discovered, though, through watching specific companies and people struggle with time management, is that even people who are good at managing their time […]

This week’s article in response to Dragons’ Den has to do with a deal that was offered, and then turned down. Since the editing this season makes it difficult to determine the exact nature of the business and the terms of any deals offered, though, I will not discuss the deal in particular, but rather […]

Over the past few years, I’ve done a variety of small jobs for a variety of clients, with the size of the projects varying in size. A friend of mine with a similar, though significantly larger, business, is in the same situation. A recent conversation regarding pricing of our services made us realize something, when […]

About the Author

Elie Kochman is the author of Advice for Small Business Owners and the founder of Optimal Upgrade Consulting. Using his experience working in the corporate world along with his exposure to the world of small businesses, he writes these articles to assist others avoiding common pitfalls of growing a business. His experience in the corporate world, building his own business, and working directly with other growing businesses has given him some perspective on the trials and pains of running a business.